


Troll Flu

by Cats_Dont_Float



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fever, Fluff, Illnesses, M/M, Sickfic, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-11-02 03:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cats_Dont_Float/pseuds/Cats_Dont_Float
Summary: Karkat gets troll flu and Dave ends up watching over him as he experiences the weird symptoms. Throughout this period, Karkat realises the extent of his flushed feelings for Dave.





	Troll Flu

It's the middle of the night, and you're not quite sure what's woken you, but you sure are awake. And now that you're awake you're far too aware of how much your throat is itching. You swallow a few times, and sigh as your throat burns even more. You figure you probably just need a drink, and get to your feet out of bed slowly, running a hand through your messy hair as you go. There's one of those rooms that the humans call a 'kitchen' pretty close to your room, and you make your way there, noticing as you walk that you've got a headache. The more you walk, the worse your head starts to hurt, and by the time you reach the kitchen you've got one hand pressed to your forehead in some weak attempt to make the pain stop.  
You fumble around in the darkness for a while until you find the light switch, because even though trolls can see pretty well in the dark, your eyes are slightly blurry from sleep and you can't fully see your surroundings. The bright white light makes you let out a loud hiss as it hits your eyes.  
"Fuck!" You hiss under your breath, stumbling further into the room. You get a glass from a nearby cupboard, blinking furiously to try and get your eyes to focus properly, and fill it with water from the tap. Your hands are shaking very slightly, and water sloshes out of the glass and onto your hands. It feels ridiculously cold against your skin, and you jump back very slightly. Cursing yourself, you raise the glass to your mouth and gulp the water down desperately, trying to stop your throat from burning quite so much. Even after you've drunk it all, your throat feels just as bad, maybe even worse, and you fill the glass back up again. You have no idea why your throat feels so bad, but you figure it's nothing unusual. You haven't been able to alchemise recupercoons on this stupid meteor, and sleeping in the weird human bed you've got is uncomfortable, and you often wake up feeling like your entire body is dried out. You continue to drink a lot of water, until you can't bear to drink any more. So you fill the glass up again to take it back to your room, and turn quickly on your heel. Instantly, the room swims before you, your vision flickering with weird coloured lights, and you stumble. Legs shaking, you manage to push the glass onto the side before your legs give out and you fall to the ground. You can't stop yourself from crying out as you fall backwards and your head hits the hard floor. Everything goes black.

When you start to come back to consciousness, you're laying on your back, staring up the ceiling, the bright light bulbs burning into your eyes. You wince and lift an arm to drape it across you face. Only then are you aware of someone rushing around the room, and muttering a stream of curses that you would be impressed with if you weren't feeling like utter shit right now. You realise you're still laying on the floor, and try to sit up.  
"Fuck, you're awake!" A familiar voice says, and then someone's crouching by your side. He leans over you, and you recognise his white hair and stupid shades. Vaguely you wonder why he's wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night (or whatever counts as night on this goddamn rock. Night's basically just the time when all the lights shut off for a few hours). Then Dave's holding out his hands and trying to help you to your feet. But your brain's a little fuzzy right now, and all you can focus on is the feeling of his hands wrapped around yours, and how cold his pale skin is against your own grey skin. He sighs, but continues to pull on your arms until finally you manage to get to your feet. You can't help swaying slightly, though, and he quickly puts his hands onto your shoulders to steady you.  
"What's wrong with you?" Dave asks, looking you up and down like he's trying to find the source of the problem, "Are you sick?"  
"I don't get sick," you reply grumpily, because you don't; you haven't been sick since you were a grub.  
"Whatever," he says, and just from the tone of his voice you know he's rolling his eyes under those shades. "Come on, I'll help you get back to your room." He wraps one arm around your waist to keep you steady, and the two of you head out of the kitchen together. It's slow going. You almost fall several times, and by the time you get back to your room your legs are far too shaky and your vision's blurred again.  
Dave helps you over to your bed, which you fall down onto, for once grateful for the lumpy mattress and weird pillows.  
"Thank you," you say weakly, rolling over to face the wall.  
"See you in the morning," Dave says quietly. You don't hear his footsteps retreat, but figure he's gone. But then he's pulling a blanket up over you, and only then do you realise that you're shivering. He tucks it tightly around you, pats you on the shoulder a few times, and then he does leave. You curl up into a ball, pulling the blanket around you. And only then do you realise it's not a blanket, but Dave's cape. He knows you love to wrap yourself in it when the two of you watch movies, though he often complains about it. You smile, clutching at his cape tightly, and manage to fall asleep despite the burning in your throat, your headache and the growing hint of pain inside your stomach that you haven't noticed until now.

When you wake back up again, your bedroom door is slightly open, and you can see that the lights in the corridors outside are turned on, telling you that it's now the dedicated daytime. It's still pretty dark in your room, but you figure you should get up, and sit up. Instantly your head spins, and you feel your stomach churning. Oh god. No. You clutch at your stomach, lean over the side of your bed, and vomit straight onto the floor of your respitblock. Shit. Maybe you are ill.  
You try to get out of bed again, and this time manage it. With a sigh, you quickly wipe at your face with the back of your hand and stumble out towards the nearby bathroom. You only manage to get there in time to stumble to the toilet and vomit again.  
You're still leaning over the toilet a few minutes later when you become aware of the sound of rushed footsteps, and then someone steps into the room, their shoes squeaking on the floor.  
"Karkat! Shit, dude," Dave declares, and then he's crouching by your side, a hand rubbing circles over your back. "I knew you were sick," he murmurs, "Should have listened to me."  
"Fuck you," you mutter weakly, and then slowly sit up because your stomach seems to have a settled a little. He's already got a wad of tissues in his hand, and wipes your face for you, before holding out his arms and pulling you into a hug. And only then do you start to wonder why he's doing this. Because sure, the two of you are best friends, and yeah, sure he calls you his best bro and jokingly says he loves you sometimes. But he's not the sort of person who can often be find caring for others. He only begrudgingly looks after Rose when she gets ridiculously drunk.  
"Why are you helping me?" You ask weakly as he helps you to your feet.  
"Because you're ill," he says with a small shrug, "And well... I just remember what it's like to be ill and I wanna help. And... you're my best bro, okay? I love you no homo and all that. So just let me take care of you. I'll be like your motherfucking nurse. Sexy nurse, you know, like those halloween costumes. Wait, do trolls have halloween?" You silence his intense rambling by shoving a hand against his chest.  
"Fine, whatever," you mutter, "I fucking human no homo bro love you too. Now let me go back to my room. Oh shit." You suddenly remember vomiting on the floor in your room, and sigh.  
"Oh yeah, saw that," Dave mutters, obviously knowing what you're thinking about, "That's kinda what got me running in here. We'll get it all cleaned up. For now, you need some new clothes and I should probably talk to Kanaya to make sure you're not gonna die or some shit."  
"I'm not going to die," you huff, but you let him take you back to your room, accepting the hand that he offers out and gripping it tightly.  
You sit on your bed and he throws some of your clothes at you. You don't even have to ask him to turn his back when you get dressed, because he already has, and he's pulled a mop from somewhere to clean up your room. Once he's done cleaning and you're changed, he turns and smiles at you faintly. He doesn't smile often, and when he does, the sight always makes your heart do weird things. The smile he's giving you now is sympathetic, and makes you think he's trying to cheer you up a little. And god, he looks so pretty when he smiles. No, wait, you shouldn't be thinking about him like that. You instantly try to push all those thoughts out of your mind, because of course you don't have any feelings for Dave. And you definitely don't find his stupid face pretty. No, it's just the illness screwing with your head  
"I'm going to go and get Kanaya to check on you," Dave says, his voice pulling you from your thoughts, "I'll be back in a minute." And then he's leaving you alone in your room. A pathetic whine escapes your mouth, and you feel like you're going to cry like a wiggler. You can't quite even tell if your body's hot or cold, but decide eventually that it must be the last one because you're shivering so much, and you pull Dave's cape back around your shoulders.

You throw the cape aside when he comes back a while later with Kanaya, but you think he sees because of the way he smirks at you.  
"Hello Karkat," Kanaya says, polite and well-spoken as ever. She steps over to you, and you notice there's a book under her arm for some reason. She places it on the end of your bed before leaning down and pressing the back of her hand to your forehead. Her hand feels cool against your skin and you appreciate the feeling for the second that she lets it linger there. Then she's pulling away, poking at you a few times, and then picks up her book and flicks a few pages with a small hum.  
"Yeah," she says, "It's as I thought. You've just got a case of troll flu."  
"Ugh," is all you say. You think you got the troll flu when you were a wiggler, but you don't remember much about it. Luckily, Kanaya's already going through a list of symptoms.  
"You'll start with sickness, a headache, stomach ache, exhaustion and blurry vision, all of which you already say you have," Kanaya says, "Within a few days it's going to develop into a loss of your voice, inability to move certain limbs and itchy rashes that will be the same colour as your blood. There's not really much treatment, you're just going to have to sort of wait for it to run its course. It'll be at least a week."  
You can do nothing but groan and smack a pillow over your face.  
"It's okay, Karkat," Kanaya says quietly, "All of us here will make sure to keep an eye on you and help you through this as much as possible. Though most of the other trolls will probably have to keep away so they don't catch this. The humans aren't at risk and my rainbow drinker abilities keep me protected from illnesses such as this. So Dave here has offered to help keep an eye on you."  
"Yeah, I'm not leaving this room until you're okay," Dave says, surprising both you and Kanaya. You remove the pillow and look up at him, blinking curiously.  
"Thank you," you murmur to the both of them, and Kanaya leans down to brush the hair away from your face and press a kiss to your forehead before she leaves. Dave raises his eyebrows above his shades at the two of you. He knows the two of you are just friends (Kanaya's dating Rose after all) but he doesn't quite know how close you two are. When she's gone though, he sits down on the end of the bed, and leans back against the wall.  
"So," he says slowly, drawing out the o for a long time, "This flu sounds like its gonna suck. At least I can't get it, so I can spend as much time with you as I want."  
You roll your eyes slightly. "You don't have to stay, idiot."  
"Nah, but I wanna," he replies, and god, you love this idiot. So you roll over, rest your head on his leg, and close your eyes. You fall asleep a few moments later with his hand resting gently on your shoulder.

You sleep on and off until the next day. But every time you wake up, Dave is there. He moves around a lot, sometimes he's sitting on the bed with you when you wake, other times he's walking round your room and poking at things, and once he's sat in a corner rapping softly to himself. Every time you wake, he smiles gently at you, and occasionally you manage to say a few words to each other before sleep pulls you back under again.  
When you wake up in the morning of the next day, you feel a little more energetic, and actually manage to get yourself out of bed to put on some new clothes. Dave gives you the privacy to change, and then the two of you sit on your bed and talk for a while. There are a few itchy patches on your arms, and as you scratch at one you notice a few bright red speckles across your grey skin.  
"Shit," you swear. When he raises an eyebrow at you, you hold out your arm for him to see. What you don't expect is for him to take your arm gently in his hands, pressing his cold fingers against the burning, itchy patches as he turns your arm over. Then he drops it like he only then realises what he's doing and you think you see him blushing a bit. So you make a joke, elbow him playfully, and the two of you fall back into your usual, easy friendship.

The next day, things get worse. You open your mouth to speak to him in the morning, and all that comes out is a horrible scratchy sound.  
"Oh, your voice is gone," Dave says, and you can see him trying to stifle a giggle. You stick a middle finger up at him, and he practically explodes into laughter. "I'm just so used to you being loud all the time," he laughs, "Ah, guess I'm going to have to do the talking for both of us." He's still laughing slightly, but your throat hurts and you're slightly overwhelmed, so you lay back down and let out a tiny, choked, whining sound, which seems to be the only sound you can manage.  
"Oh, hey, it's okay," Dave murmurs, laying down next to you and holding out his arms. You roll towards him hesitantly, and let him pull you into a hug. "It's okay," he says, stroking your hair gently with one hand, "You heard Kanaya. Just a week or so and it'll all be over." You sigh, and then your stomach growls slightly. He pushes you back slightly, looking at you as if he thinks you're gonna be sick. "Oh, you're hungry," he says after a second of staring, "I'll go get you something." You nod and offer him a tiny smile.  
You're practically asleep by the time he gets back, but he shakes you awake gently, crawls onto the bed by your side and passes you a plate of grub sauce toast. You sit up and take a few bites slowly. Your throat stings as you eat, but at least your stomach seems to have settled for now. And by the time you've finished eating you haven't thrown up, so you let out a sigh of relief and lay back down. Dave's relaxing on your bed like he's more at home here than in his own room, and you drop your head sideways to rest it on his shoulder. He throws an arm around your shoulder, pulls you slightly closer to his side, and says nothing more. You fall asleep after a while apparently, and he must not move the whole time, because he's in the exact same place when you wake up.

The next few days pass without your symptoms getting much worse. Sure, the rashes on your arms get brighter red and a lot itchier, but you've stopped throwing up entirely, and though your voice is still entirely gone, your throat doesn't hurt as long as you don't attempt to speak. And Dave, true to his word, doesn't leave your room unless he really does have to. He leaves occasionally to get new clothes from his room, shower or get himself food, but aside from that he stays in your room entirely.  
Then you wake up on the fourth day, and you can barely move your legs. You take hold of the notebook that you've been using to communicate with Dave, and write down a massive: FUCK.  
"What's wrong?" He asks.  
CAN'T MOVE MY LEGS, you write back, making a feeble attempt at kicking out with your legs and barely moving them.  
"Oh shit," he says, "I'm gonna talk to Kan, she said this would happen but I just wanna check." And then he's gone, disappearing from the room at a faster speed than you've seen him move in ages, and you wonder to yourself why he cares so much.  
You don't have much time to think about that though, because he's back with Kanaya within minutes, and she's poking your legs and trying to get you to move them.  
I CAN'T you write over and over, until she finally leaves you alone.  
"You'll be okay," she says, "Just try to massage your legs to ease the muscles a little and keep them comfortable."  
You roll your eyes, because this little trip of hers has been no help and you're starting to get annoyed with this illness.  
"I'll look after him," Dave declares, like the goddamn hero he's decided he is, and even that's starting to piss you off. Kanaya just grins, nods at the both of you, and leaves promptly.

FAT LOT OF GOOD SHE WAS, you scribble down. Dave smacks your hand as you write the last letter.  
"Don't be mean," he says, and when you snarl as best as you can he adds, "Kat, I know you're frustrated, but its just a few more days and then you'll be okay, I promise. And I'm here for you, just like Kan is, just like everyone is."  
You sigh, and the quickly scribble down, ALRIGHT. I'M SORRY.  
"It's fine," he tells you, draping an arm around your shoulders again, "We're gonna make these last few days as good as possible, I promise." You smile up at him, and he knocks his head against the side of your face with a small laugh. And then you both pretend you're not blushing when your faces stay slightly too close together for a few moments.  
Later, when your legs seize up so much that the pain has you almost in tears, he takes Kanaya's advice, and gets you to drape your legs over his lap. You bite at the inside of your cheek nervously as he rolls up the legs of your sweatpants and starts to massage your legs gently. Almost instantly the pain fades away a little, and you feel yourself relaxing. As he continues to work his hands up the backs of your legs, pushing at the tightened muscles, you can't even try and stop yourself from purring. He stops what he's doing for a second to look at you in surprise, and then continues. Kanaya gave him some sort of medical cream earlier too, and he rubs this gently over the burning, itchy patches on your legs. The cream is cold, and you flinch slightly, and then realise that already your legs are starting to move a little better.  
You scrabble around for your notepad to write out a quick THANK YOU to him as he stops for a second.  
"Hey, that's alright," he says with a small smile, looking almost nervous, you think.  
He does the exact same thing a few hours later when you wake up from a nap barely able to move your shoulders. And it's as you sit in his lap, his cold fingers gently pressing into your burning skin, that you realise that you are completely and utterly flushed for him.

The illness starts to fade around the fifth day, and on the sixth morning you wake up with your voice back. Dave's asleep, slumped in the corner of your room, phone discarded by his side. As you do every time you wake up, you test your voice, and this time a scratchy noise comes out., and you manage to say a few words. So you go to quickly scramble over towards Dave, only for your legs to stop working halfway across the room and for you to plummet to the ground. He's up in an instant, shades slipping off his face slightly as he scrambles over to you.  
"Ouch," you mutter weakly, laying in a heap and looking up at him helplessly.  
"Hey, your voice came back," he grins.  
"Barely," you huff, and then let out a squeak of surprise as he gathers you easily into his arms, your aching limbs protesting, and carries you across the bed. "No," you manage to say, "I need to use the bathroom." He sighs, and only then do you realise how tired he must be. "Sorry I..."  
"No apologies," he cuts you off, "Lets get you to the bathroom."  
He carries you out, and you're stopped in the corridors by a confused looking Vriska and Terezi. Dave warns them you've still got the flu to keep them away before getting you the rest of the way to the bathroom. He has to carry you in, but politely steps outside the door to give you some privacy. With your stumbling, it takes you ages, but finally you get back to him in the hallway, and he picks you up again without you even having to ask. You're so lucky that you're small and he's weirdly strong.  
When you're back in your room, he once again massages everywhere that you tell him aches, and rubs cream across your rashes. And then he tucks you back into your bed, brings you one of the books you've borrowed from Rose, and falls asleep by your side as you read. He slumps against your side, and you wrap an arm around him, just to make sure he doesn't fall into an uncomfortable position.

Two days later, you're fine. You wake up and feel fine, and for some reason you're slightly disappointed. You're not really sure why, until you look over at the human who's passed out on his stomach on the middle of the floor for some reason, and realise that you're going to really miss having him around all the time. Even so, you feel bad keeping him here for no reason, so you get out of bed and shake him awake.  
"Dave, Dave," you hiss, and when he sits up, shades off and blinking tiredly at you, you tell him "Hey, I'm better!"  
"Oh, that's great," he says, and he really doesn't sound that happy, which is strange.  
"At least you can get some proper sleep now," you say with a small, slightly forced laugh.  
"Yeah, I guess," he says, getting to his feet. "Umm, I'll see you later, yeah?"  
"Definitely," you tell him, because after a week of seeing him everyday, it's going to take you a while to not want him around you all of the time. He waves, and then backs out of your room, muttering something about telling Kanaya and the others that you're safe to be around now.

You sit back on your bed, and watch him go with a small smile. Burrowing back into the pile of pillows and blankets, you spot one of the shirts he's left here over the last week, trapped between two pillows, and pull it out. It smells like him, and you press it to your face for far longer than necessary, breathing in his scent. You roll over, burying your face in the pillows and his shirt, and sigh softly. And that's when you hear someone step into the room. Sitting up, you see Dave walking into the room far too quickly and looking a little anxious.  
"Hey," he says, and you can see him scratching slightly at the back of his neck in the way he does when he's nervous, "Umm... I was thinking about doing this when I was looking after you, but I felt shitty about doing it because you were ill then and it wasn't the time, and then I was gonna do it today but I'm a fucking coward and... but I'm gonna do it, coz I'll kick myself if I do. But... I don't wanna ruin our friendship and -"  
"Dave what the fuck?" You cut him off quickly, "Do what?"  
He looks at you, presses his lips together tightly as he thinks, then steps towards you and crawls onto the bed with you. "Do this," he murmurs, and then he grabs you by the collar of your shirt and pulls you into a kiss.

You let out a squeak of surprise, and freeze for a second. He notices this, and starts to back away, so you reach out to grab his shoulders and pull him back towards you, kissing him desperately. He clutches at your shirt, balling it up in his fists, and then reaches up one hand to tug at your hair very slightly, causing you to gasp. He pulls back very slightly after that, and you press a brief kiss to his lips one more time before sitting back.  
"I'm so fucking flushed for you," you tell him before you can say a word, "I've wanted to do that for ages. Can't believe you beat me to it."  
He laughs breathlessly, and rests his forehead against yours. "I love you too," he murmurs, running the fingers of one hand through the hair at the back of your neck and pulling you a little closer to him.  
"Be my matesprit?" You ask hopefully, and you really hope he'll say yes.  
"Of course I will, you idiot," he says, and you feel his breath on your lips. So you lean forward again to kiss him lightly, and then drop your head onto his shoulder, hugging him tightly. He pulls you even closer so you're practically in his lap and he presses a light kiss onto one of your horns. You purr loudly, the feeling vibrating through your chest and throat, and he nuzzles his face into the side of your neck, and the two of you stay like that for a long time.  
"Karks, I really do fucking love you," he says after a while, "But you've been in this shirt for like three days and it's kinda gross dude."  
"Ugh, you're right," you groan softly, stretching out your arms and moving away from him slightly. "Let me go shower and get changed and I'll be back." He smiles, and ruffles your hair as you move away. Grabbing some new clothes from a drawer, you head towards the door, turning to rush back towards Dave at the last minute to press a soft kiss to his cheek before you rush back off.

When you come back from the shower, hair wet, skin damp and dressed in fresh clothes, he's settled himself in your bed, tucked under the covers and you see him yawn as you step in.  
"Hey," he smiles as you come in, "Wanna come cuddle? I'm tired as hell."  
You grin. "Yeah," you agree, then rush over to climb into bed by his side. He rubs his hands up and down your arms to warm them and tucks your head under his chin, face resting in your wet hair.  
"Karks," he murmurs softly, reaching out to grab one of your hands and running his thumb over your knuckles. "I... I really do love you. Been wanting this for so long."  
"Me too," you murmur, because you really have been, though you've only really noticed it recently. You curl up close to his chest, and tangle your legs with his, and because you both need sleep you wrap your arms around him, close your eyes and let the room fall silent. He presses a kiss to the top of your head again, and the two of you cuddle together. Eventually, you hear his breathing slow as he falls asleep, and soon you're drifting into sleep too.  
"I love you," you whisper into the darkness of the room.  
"Love you too," he murmurs back very quietly, apparently still slightly awake. You run a hand through his hair, kiss his forehead, and then slowly let yourself fall asleep in your new matesprit's arms. For once, you're happy for that goddamn troll flu.

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling ill a few days ago and started writing this. Finally finished it up and thought I'd post it, even though its really diverted from the original plan I had for the plot.


End file.
